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Confront Your Ignorance

If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing
conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present
system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning
which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated
learning.

Context

You have identified gaps in your skillset, gaps that are relevant
to your daily work.

Problem

There are tools and techniques that you need to master, but you
do not know how to begin. Some of these are things that everyone
around you already seems to know, and there is an expectation that you
already have this knowledge.

Solution

Pick one skill, tool, or technique and actively fill the gaps in
your knowledge about it.

Do this in whichever ways are most effective for you. For some
people, the best approach involves trying to get an overview by
reading all the introductory articles and FAQs they can get hold of.
Other people find that jumping straight to the construction of Breakable Toys is the most effective
way to understand something. Whichever approach works for you, don’t
forget to ask around to your Kindred
Spirits and mentors to see if anyone already has this skill and
is willing to share what they’ve learned. Sometimes others will be
trying to acquire this skill as well, and by working together you can
make better progress. At some point you will have gained a
satisfactory level of ability in this new area, and then you can
decide whether it is more productive to dig deeper or to turn your
attention to the other gaps in your skillset. There aren’t enough
hours in the day to hone all your skills to a high level, so you must
learn to make the necessary trade-offs between them.

This pattern is closely tied to Expose Your Ignorance, but
implementing it is less of a challenge to your pride because it can be
done in private, without anyone else ever finding out the things you
did not know. However, as an apprentice with aspirations to mastery,
you need to be willing to Expose
Your Ignorance as well. Using this pattern in isolation (that
is, confronting your ignorance without exposing it) runs the risk of
encouraging a culture where failure and learning are unacceptable
because everybody does their learning in secret. Remember that
learning in public is one of the ways in which an apprentice begins
the transition to journeyman. It’s a small step from learning where
people can see you to teaching.

Even a successful application of this pattern can have negative
side effects. The programmers who maintain your code are unlikely to
appreciate it if your need to learn how to build complex concurrent
systems leads you to write your own messaging system in Scala rather
than using an off-the-shelf product. They’re going to be even more
upset if they can’t ask you any questions about it because you’re
currently at a conference. Finally, your employer is also unlikely to
be understanding if your educational needs get in the way of the
successful delivery of its project. In short, you need to be sensitive
enough not to let your apprenticeship become a problem for the team.
One of the distinguishing facets of the craft approach is a
willingness to put the wider interests of your community before your
own, rather than using the team and the client to further your
personal growth.

On the other hand, it is also possible to Expose Your Ignorance without
confronting it. People who do this merely shrug apologetically when
confronted by their ignorance, as if to say “that’s just the way it
is.” This leads to a lifetime of being humble, ignorant, and overly
dependent on other members of the team. Eventually, it leads to teams
where each member defends her own little silo of knowledge and shrugs
when a problem crosses into someone else’s territory.

So it’s important to strike a delicate balance between this
pattern and Expose Your
Ignorance. Confronting your ignorance on its own leads to
arrogant infovores who never get anything done, while exposing your
ignorance without seeing it as a problem to be solved leads to
excessive humility and helplessness.

Action

Take the list of items from Expose Your Ignorance and
strive to learn each one, crossing them off the list as you do so.
This new knowledge you have may reveal gaps you hadn’t noticed before;
don’t forget to add these things to your list.